From Manmohan-vintage rouble scam to Narendrabhai's 'ethical incapacities'

Reminiscences by civil servants are often marred by the 'I' factor. The eagerness to justify their mistakes usually detracts from the credit side. Javid Chowdhury (The Insider's View-Penguin) falls outside the pattern. He does talk about the positions he held, but mostly to illustrate the wider philosophical view he presents about governance. His canvas is large and his approach analytical. This earns him the reader's trust.

He pays touching tributes to the government servants he came to admire -- from Atmarambhai, the headclerk so experienced and diligent that he was known as the 'working collector' to the famous M. G. Pimputkar, held in awe by IAS trainees for his sense of integrity. But he also criticises the tendency among sections of the higher civil service to butter up Corporate Captains for post-retirement sinecures. He decries lobbyists for not contributing "a lawful or ethical value addition" to cases under consideration. The lobbyist operates "through a mix of trade-offs and pay-offs".

Chowdhury shares with the reader the insights he gained from his vantage position. In the notorious Jain hawala case, 62 politicians and 18 government servants were found to be receiving hawala payments on a regular basis. These were not bribes on a quid pro quo basis as many of the recipients were not in positions of power at the time. In other words, there was no evident corruption in the transactions, but there were serious violation of foreign exchange laws.

Yet the CBI pursued the cases under the Prevention of Corruption Act and the cases "were thrown out by the court at the threshold itself". Chowdhury cites provisions of the much stricter Foreign Exchange Regulation Act and asserts that prosecution under FERA would have produced immediate results. So why didn't the CBI do so? Good question.

For that matter, how many of us knew that the Indo-US Rupee-Rouble Trade Agreement was "the largest value foreign exchange scam using a single modus operandi that has been played out in the history of India"? It led to "the draining away of about 40 million US dollars from the country in one year".

India imported defence equipment from Russia against rupees, but under an arbitrarily denominated exchange rate. Russia built up a huge credit balance which it surreptitiously auctioned off for payment in US dollars. Officials in both countries benefited and so did the Russian Government and financial fixers. The losers were Indians.

Chowdhury, who was Director of Enforcement then, proposed a simple solution to keep out the racketeers. An unusually quick reply from the Department of Revenue expressed outrage at the suggestion. Evidently top officials were interested in the racket.

Somewhat shyly, Chowdhury records that the Rupee-Rouble Agreement was negotiated and many revisions made in the period when Manmohan Singh held a series of positions in the financial sector, from Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs to Finance Secretary and finally Finance Minister. He makes no comment other than that the nature and size of the scam were known to the top people.

Javid Chowdhury is a Gujarati and he has much to say about Narendra Modi's ideas and actions. He says it with his usual adherence to the facts he knew. Here's a gem. He was Secretary in the Union Health Ministry at the time of the 2002 riots. Modi did not allow the Union Health Minister to visit Shah Alam relief camp; the state health minister threatened to jump out of the car if the central minister insisted on visiting the camp.

Providing a succinct account of the caste history of Gujarati politics, Chowdhury says that "Narendrabhai is from a sub-sect [ of the OBC category] that is particularly excluded from the power structure" which makes his rise in the upper-caste oriented BJP "a freak deviation". He faults Modi for "his several ethical incapacities". But his main criticism is that Modi has little concept of the science of public administration, that his centralised model of governance will eventually leave Gujarat an administrative wasteland. In this year of election hype, who has ears to hear?

What is good for the High Command? What is good for the Country?

Believe it or not, some analysts in Karnataka publicly attributed the Congress victory in the state to Rahul Gandhi's campaign speeches. Narendra modi was all bombast, they said, while Rahul asked people about their problems and promised to redress them, thereby winning their votes.

This is the tragedy of the Congress, and by extension, the country. If the party had fared poorly in the election, the blame would have been put squarely on the local leaders. In victory, all credit goes to the High Command. Because of this Congress culture, we should not be overly optimistic about the state's new Congress Government. Its priority may not be to understand the public mood or to provide good governance but, as always, to please the High Command.

What indeed pleases the High Command? According to public perception, what is good for the High Command is what pleases the High Command, and what is good for the High Command is different from what is good for the country. This perception did not drop from the sky one fine morning. It grew over the years as the people watched the High Command's actions, inactions and non-actions. It grew as an offshoot of the harvest of scams in the last couple of decades and the High Command's responses to them.

The common factor in all the scams was that the Congress establishment including the Government made no serious effort to punish the guilty. On the contrary, it made every effort to let the guilty go free. The most notorious example was Ottavio Quattrochi. Despite a spectrum of evidence pointing to this Italian middleman's role in clinching the Bofors gun deal and commissions thereof, union ministers helped him escape to Malaysia. Then Indian investigative agencies disgraced themselves by contriving to lose cases against him in foreign courts. Finally India ensured that all cases against him were withdrawn and his frozen bank accounts released to him. Never did a deal-maker receive such privileged protection as Quattrochi did. The people of India saw him as part of the High Command.

Because the early scams found the Government shielding the scamsters, other more daring scams followed. The Government tried to protect the culprits in each of them. Since the Government is a creature of the High Command, the needle of suspicion in every scam pointed to the High Command. Initially politeness had prevented names being named when it came to the High Command. By the time the 2G spectrum, the coal allocation, the abuse of the CBI and the Railway Board bribery cases raised unprecedented stink in the country, the High Command's hand in high-level corruption began to be openly discussed.

How else could it be? How could the Law Minister and Railway Minister do what they did without the knowledge of their protectors? The Ashwani Kumars and the Pawan Bansals are soapy hangers-on who rose in politics only as cogs in the High Command's wheel.

The malfunctioning cogs generated as much dirt as possible. Then they were broken off and cast away, the credit of course going to Sonia Gandhi, in a replay of the Karnataka credit Rahul got. So what was she doing for seven days when those evil ministers were covering up their tracks? More likely, it was the CBI and the Supreme Court that brought about the ouster of the sinners -- the CBI by unearthing scandalous details about the Bansal family's excesses, and the Supreme Court by issuing a warning to the Government. Bring in legislation ensuring the independence of the CBI, the "caged parrot", it said, or face the Court taking action on its own.

That was when resignations -- or shall we say, dismissals -- should have taken place if democratic decencies were at work. The public could see why no such thing happened. Nothing happens unless the High Command moves because the High Command's finger is in every pie. Karnataka leader Siddaramaiah meant well when he inadvertently said after his election victory: " I wish to thank Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Gandhi". Spot on.

Karnataka lies wounded by corruption, communalism; voters are helpless

Karnataka votes today. If this election is different from previous ones, it is because the tragedy that has overtaken the state stands out more starkly today than before. Led by some wise leaders and legendary administrators, Karnataka had become famous for its progressive pace. Decline set in with the 1975 Emergency, developing rapidly into decay and then ruin.

All parties contributed to this process of destruction and that is why a change of parties will not alter the situation in any significant way. Our national misfortune is that electoral democracy has reduced all parties to the same level of opportunism, amorality and lack of ideology. Democracy has become a shell, giving substance to Ambedkar's prescient remark in 1950 that the Indian soil was essentially undemocratic.

Even so, the Karnataka voter will most likely use today's election to punish the BJP more than any other party. The first of its two elementary sins, the propagation of corruption, was common to all parties. But the BJP, under Chief Minister B. S. Yeddyurappa, went about it with a blatancy that was unprecedented. It used illegal money from Bellary's belly to buy the legislative majority it needed, then let the mining mafia make a mockery of all the laws of the land, then gave cabinet positions to thugs, rapists and run-of-the-mill looters. It was an Empire of Evil and Yeddyurappa learned nothing even after going to jail. That he still wants to rule Karnataka is a commentary on what politics has become.

The second sin, with more ominous implications, was the communalisation of public life in the state, especially in coastal Karnataka. Hindutva hooligans attacked people in pubs and homestays in the Mangalore area and even waylaid college boys and girls who talked to friends belonging to communities other than theirs. These incidents of fascist violence saw the state machinery either staying away or tacitly supporting them. Today key areas are communally divided.

Those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind. The Social Democratic Party of India, the political arm of the Islamist organisation, the Popular Front of India, has fielded 24 candidates in Dakshina Kannada which has the largest number of Muslim voters in the state after Bidar. The Kerala police recently raided what it said was an arms training camp of the Popular Front. Several young men were taken into custody and Karnataka police went there to do its own investigation. The coastal area now faces confrontationist politics. Whoever wins, democracy will lose.

Ironically, democracy will lose also if the Congress Party, as is expected, forms the next government. Firstly, the Congress will interpret its victory as the people's endorsement of its virtues. That would be nonsense because the Congress is as virtueless as the BJP. Secondly, the Congress may not have a leader with Yeddyurappa's genius for pillage, but it is by no means lacking in talent. Some of its proven exploiters who have criminal cases pending are among today's vote-seekers. This means that in this election people will escape from the depradations of the Renukacharyas and the Krishniah Settys and the Easwarappas only to succumb to the depradations of the C.M.Ibrahims and the D.K.Shivakumars and the Roshan Baigs.

The Congress can still avoid self-destruction, but only by recognising (a) that leaders with an image of corruption need to be kept out of the Government and (b) that both the chief ministerial hopefuls, G. Parameshwara and Siddaramaiah, compromised themselves by sponsoring corrupt cronies as candidates. This was a selfish move to boost their competitive edge post-election. They were considered worthy leaders until their self-goals exposed them as unreliable. That leaves the Congress with only one leader with his credibility intact. If Mallikarjun Kharge is picked to lead the Government and if he keeps the tainted ones out of the cabinet, the Congress may yet get a chance to rebuild itself. But to move the veteran back from Delhi would mean a whole lot of infighting and group politicking the Congress is known for. So, at the end of it all, the crooks may have their day since they have the money and the knowhow. And the culture of politics is in their favour. For now.

The mourning over J.S.Verma reminds us of the need for conscience keepers

What made Justice J.S.Verma exceptional? He was Chief Justice of India for less than a year and no epoch-making cases came up during those months. Yet his death last week saw the whole country mourning. Among those who gathered to say farewell to him at the Lodhi crematorium were L.K.Advani and Sonia Gandhi, Fali Nariman and Ram Jethmalani, social activists and public figures, heads of news channels and senior editors and of course brother judges and lawyers.

Clearly Justice Verma had made an impact that extended beyond the offices he held. The independence he displayed and the ideas he projected won him across-the-board respect. This was all the more remarkable because he became a judge, in the Madhya Pradesh High Court, only in June 1973. Some of the most important cases in the country's history had already been concluded by then; in the Golaknath case (1967), a 6:5 judgment of the Supreme Court had ruled that the fundamental rights provided by the Constitution could not be amended by Parliament, while the Keshavananda Bharati case (1973) had seen a 7:6 judgment reversing the earlier ruling but saying that although Parliament could amend any part of the Constitution, the "basic features of the Constitution" could never be abrogated. These landmark judgments and the subversions of the Court during the Emergency were all part of history when Justice Verma was elevated to the Supreme Court in 1989.

Among his best-known judgments was the so-called Visakha case, filed by women's organisations in Rajasthan to get justice for a Dalit rape victim who had been hounded by caste groups and even by lower courts. The Verma judgment, known as the Visakha guideline, defined sexual harassment at the workplace and laid out a roadmap to deal with it. That was pioneering work because Parliament had dithered on the subject and passed a sexual harassment bill only 15 years after the Visakha judgment. Because of initiatives like this Justice Verma came to be regarded as the conscience-keeper of the judiciary.

The importance of conscience-keepers is paramount. We are a nation founded on four estates. The moral estate was the first to lose its relevance. Then Parliament lost its values. Then the media lost is credibility. The judiciary, despite the corruption that has seeped into it, is the only estate that still plays a nation-building role. The Keshavananda Bharati case prevented a majoritarian party from taking autocratic control of the country as Indira Gandhi indeed tried to do through a series of constitutional amendments. We remain a democracy because of the judicial conscience of the 1970s.

In the subsequent period Justice Verma made judicial activism constructive and patriotic. It was his character that made the difference. He was always accessible, always identifying himself with the problems of the people. His legal scholarship was the envy of his peers. His integrity was the despair of politicians. His last activity was a kind of crowning glory. The Verma Committee's report after the Delhi gangrape case set a speed record and also became noted for the comprehensiveness of the remedial steps it proposed. That the Government proved too incompetent to benefit from it was the nation's loss.

Some day perhaps we will have informed studies that assess members of the judiciary and their contributions. Fali Nariman's autobiography (Before Memory Fades, 2010) has a chapter on "Some Judges of the Supreme Court". He identified three types -- judges with a political agenda, judges with a social agenda and judges without an agenda. The first (like Justice Subba Rao) and the second (like Justice V.R.Krishna Iyer) helped change the habits of mind of judges and influenced creative judicial thinking; the third, more numerous, were "significant for the development of the law in the country".

There were also judges with elastic consciences. Forget the money-crazy ones, but what about those who made a farce of judicial principles to curry favour with Indira Gandhi during the Emergency. We need new books assessing the contributions of A.N.Ray and M.H. Beg as well as H.R. Khanna and J.S.Verma. Understanding the nature of badness is as much a learning experience as admiring the quality of goodness.

When the voter is treated as a fool, beware the ire of the 99 percent

The larger picture casts doubt on the very viability of democracy in our country. As the world knows it, democracy is government of the ordinary people, by fairly elected people, for the good of all people. To some extent, we had that kind of democracy in the first few years of independence. What we have today is government of manipulators, by manipulators, for manipulators.

With every election the situation gets worse, not better. Munirathna Naidu, Congress candidate in a Bangalore constituency, wanted the returning officer to set all other tasks aside and process his nomination papers immediately. He threatened the officer: "If you ask [any clarifications] later, then remember the bomb blast in Malleswaram". The man was arrested, then released on bail. These are the types who become elected representatives of the people.

More bizarre was the case of Maharashtra's elected MLAs. A bunch of them assaulted a police officer inside the Assembly. A committee of MLAs has absolved them of assault charges and recommended a departmental inquiry against the police officer who is already under suspension. In the hands of thugs, democracy becomes a farce and lawbreakers rule. The voter becomes the ultimate fool.

Few represent the depraved legislative culture of our times more dramatically than Ajit Pawar, the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra. By the admission of his own party operatives, he is given to crude ways and crude jokes. "Nothing can happen in politics", he once said, "unless you are a thug". Unhappy with press reports about the sufferings of farmers, he told journalists in 2011: "You people must be banned... You'll understand when you are beaten up".

His latest adventure pertains of course to urination. He withdrew the offer to urinate into the dams only when he realised that "when there is no water to drink, it is difficult even to urinate". This is the man who was irrigation minister for ten years, oversaw government spending of Rs 43,270 crore on 426 projects (none of them completed) and ended up increasing the area under irrigation by just 0.1 percent. Where's that money? Where's the water?

A cursory glance across the country is enough to bring out a humbling reality -- that our democracy has passed the stage when it could be gently teased with phrases like "functioning anarchy". Today it is a scene of mounting shame. The "elected representatives of the people" consist noticeably of the scum of the earth. Among them are murderers in UP, blackmailers in Bihar, kidnappers in Haryana, rapists in Punjab. There is no sign of the situation improving if developments in election-bound Karnataka are anything to go by.

Munirathna Naidu was by no means the only candidate who considered himself above the law. Venkatesh Gowda, representing the one-and-only Yeddyurappa's party, also threatened a returning officer. He would teach the officer a lesson, he said, if he were not allowed to take out processions and to stage protests. He had earlier assaulted officials who had come to raid his office. It will be the death of democracy when men like this become ministers.

Even the terrorist bomb that exploded in Bangalore was quickly converted into a political bomb. The BJP said the bomb was targetted at its workers. The Congress said the bomb would electorally help the BJP. What did that mean? Did it imply that if a bomb went off near the Congress office that would electorally help the Congress? The disconnect between democracy and our politics could not be sharper.

Perhaps money tells the complete story. Money is the enabler and money is the goal. In two days alone currency bundles amounting to Rs 1.4 crore were seized by the authorities along with 500 cases of liquor. At the other end of the spectrum, affidavits filed by candidates revealed a picture that has become a feature of our democracy. Karnataka's Chief Minister's assets increased more than four times in the last five years; one Deputy Chief Minister's assets almost doubled, the other's rose by a couple of crores. Democracy of the few by the few for the few is flourishing. For now. The 99 percent are watching.